Hi IM’s. So we have had a bit of a health scare with our 4 year old daughter. She has been having persistent headaches over the past 2 weeks, with her complaining about them becoming more frequent over the past couple of days. We had her eyes tested – all good – so took her to the GP last night. He was very good and took our concerns seriously, examining her without finding any other of the very scary symptoms one may expect with a neurological problem. Because we haven’t been able to pinpoint a cause of the pain, he gave us an urgent referral to a paediatric neurologist which completely freaked us out. We ended up taking her to the major children’s hospital in our city to see if they could provide any more answers. They examined her, going in to more detail than the GP, and also could not find any obvious cause. The consulting doctor was wonderful, giving us a lot of information and explaining that with her current symptoms any risk of something nasty is lower than the risks associated with a scan (i.e. CT or MRI scan) due to the radiation effects on young children and also the fact she would need to go under a general anaesthetic. So he has recommended that we wait for the appointment with the neurologist (4-6 weeks) and in the meantime keep a diary of her headaches, and note any possible triggers, and obviously watch for other concerning symptoms such as vomiting, seizures etc.
So I guess my question is – has any one had a similar experience? Have you found any unusual causes of headaches in your kids that we also may be able to check? Obviously our thoughts have gone straight to the worst possible outcome, and we are terrified, though the fact that she is not showing any other symptoms is a positive sign. Ill also add that I have a strong family history of severe migraine, and they have not ruled out the possibility that she may be starting with these very early.
Thanks x
7 Replies
As a migraine sufferer myself, it sounds very likely that's the cause.
Generally they take head pain very seriously and rule out the worst things first (that tends to make the whole thing very scary too, a regular eye examination caused me a dash to the ER to have an emergency MRI and lumbar puncture last year. They had me convinced I had a brain tumor but alas it turned out to be migraines).
I have heard cutting out processed sugars can greatly reduce migraines.
I hope it all turns out well for your little one xx
You might find that a change in diet might help. You could try visiting a dietitian (apd) and seeing if a low chemical diet might help. Sometimes food chemicals like salicylates, amines, glutamates can trigger headaches and migraines.
Does your child grind her teeth?
My daughter had the same symptoms, turns out after a blood test that she is ceoliac. It has only been a few weeks but since I have taken all gluten out of her diet her headaches have reduced dramatically.
Is she drinking enough water? I suffer from migraines and one of my triggers is dehydration. I need to drink at least 2L of water or cordial a day (up to 3L in summer) to prevent headaches and migraines. While I definitely wouldn't recommend these quantities for a child, try increasing the amount she does drink. Knowing that dehydration is one of my triggers, my first question when my boys complain of a headache is "how much water have you had?", it annoys them but usually they haven't had much to drink. Also keep a record of what she eats to see if there is a food trigger.
My sister had similar thing when she was very little.
It was caused from Eggs
Took ages to work it out! Best of luck with finding the cause!
I don't know anything about migraines but my little boy who was 3 started out with a bunch of headaches, dizzy, exhaustion (and a bunch of stuff that ur bubba doesn't sound like she has). BUT they thought it was his eyes and and then one thing led to another and we found thru an mri it was a stroke.
I'm NOT saying ur girl has this but i am encouraging u to b a bull dog about this and not just accept what one doctor says.
They were about to prescribe glasses for him and then i challanged them that they hadn't done an mri like they thought and it was only then they discovered he'd had a stroke.